Two red herrings put forth by critics of choice
hinge on the romantic notion of the _commonality_ of the American
common school.

Almost half a century has passed since the economist Milton Friedman
first proposed offering taxpayer-financed tuition vouchers to parents
dissatisfied with local public schools. Ever since, proponents of
school choice programs have argued for a "free market" approach to
institutionalized education, one that would open up affordable
private-sector options and thereby effectively spell an end to the
near-monopoly now exercised by public schools.

Two red herrings put forth by critics of choice hinge
on the romantic notion of the ‘commonality’ of the
American common school.

Choice advocates anticipate that under the prodding of competition
akin to that prevailing in business and industry, failing schools would
be forced to undergo meaningful revitalization if they hoped to
continue attracting students. Meanwhile, parents would be financially
empowered to decide what type of schools, public or private, they
wanted their children to attend. The latter, of course, under free
choice presumably would benefit from enhanced accessibility.

Critics, however, allege that school choice plans would further
weaken and impoverish public education. If widely adopted, opponents
fear, vouchers would undermine the political will necessary to fix the
ailments currently afflicting public education in this country,
especially in decaying urban school systems. School choice allegedly
would serve to exacerbate racial inequality, further reinforce
segregation and other societal divisions, and ultimately contribute to
the demise of the democratic, secular, common school ideal.

Debate over school choice has heated up considerably in the last few
months, prompted in part by inconsistent rulings from the courts on the
constitutionality of experimental programs in Cleveland and Florida.
Neither supporters nor skeptics have lacked for rhetorical fervor. Yet
hard evidence for or against various private-school-voucher plans has
been skimpy at best. Last year's RAND study, "Rhetoric vs. Reality:
What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter
Schools," for instance, sounded a decidedly cautionary note. Although
its authors endorsed school choice initiatives as experiments worth
continuing, they concluded there is insufficient hard evidence as yet
to allow any conclusive judgments about their merits. Neither the
advantages touted by supporters of school choice nor the worst fears of
opponents appear warranted so far by the limited data in hand.

Although irrefutable evidence to help policymakers embrace or reject
school choice may be lacking, we believe there are several suspect
arguments clouding public debate. Two such red herrings put forth by
critics of choice hinge on the romantic notion of the "commonality" of
the American common school. The first amounts to the claim that
vouchers would have a deleterious effect because they would serve to
increase attendance at private schools, which tend to be segregated by
race and social class. The second is that school choice would weaken
efforts to sustain other, equally important egalitarian and democratic
ideals associated with common public schooling.

Paucity of data notwithstanding, some tentative findings on racial
integration in schools—or the lack thereof—seem pertinent.
In 1998, Jay P. Greene, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for
Policy Research, in New York City, released a study indicating that
students in private schools are less likely to attend racially
segregated classrooms than their public school peers. Using data from
the 1992 National Educational Longitudinal Study, Mr. Greene found that
37 percent of private school students attended integrated classrooms,
compared with only 18 percent of students in public schools. He
concluded overall that students in private schools were less likely to
attend racially segregated classrooms than were those attending public
schools.

Researchers from the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University,
however, recently drew precisely the opposite conclusion. Using data
collected from the 1997-98 school year, they found black-white
segregation was more prevalent in private schools than in their public
counterparts.

Our own research, drawing from the Early Childhood Longitudinal
Study- Kindergarten (Georgetown Public Policy Review, Spring
2002), examined 1998 data on 17,000 students enrolled in 866
kindergarten programs nationwide. Our findings fell somewhere in the
middle. We found that kindergartners across the country were more
likely to attend school in racially segregated classrooms in private
schools than in public schools. But the difference was not large:
Private and public schools alike tend to be racially segregated. We
found, for example, that most kindergarten students, whether situated
in private or public schools, are assigned to classrooms in which
nearly everyone else (85 percent or more) looks like they do.

Our analysis provides data on the relative levels of racial
integration in existing public and private schools. It does not
necessarily furnish corroborating evidence for the claim that school
choice would exacerbate racial segregation. Nor, of course, does it
imply that the effect of school choice programs would be to advance
integration.

We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that our
public schools are truly common schools.

Simply put, what our study does is offer an accurate picture of the
current racial composition of very young students in public and private
schools. School choice critics are correct in arguing that private
schools are segregated by race. But this particular claim does not
necessarily constitute a good criticism of school choice
plans—because public schools are similarly segregated.

We are not suggesting that the possible impact of school choice on
racial segregation in the United States should be ignored. Far from it.
But the allegation that increased enrollments in private schools will
inevitably obstruct the progress of racial integration and therefore
fatally compromise the melting pot of public common schools needs to be
viewed with some skepticism. More broadly, we need to disabuse
ourselves of the notion that our public schools are truly common
schools in which the offspring of CEOs sit next to those of line
workers, where the children of the rich freely associate with the
children of the poor. This is a romantic, idealized myth. In fact, our
"common" schools are not very common at all. For the most part, public
schools are neighborhood schools. And rightly or wrongly, neighborhoods
tend to be differentiated by race, ethnicity, and household income.

The second dubious argument runs as follows: Only the more involved,
active parents—those motivated and skillful enough to work the
system—would take advantage of school choice programs. The rest
might not even bother. Those children left behind in underperforming
public schools would inevitably be disadvantaged in the absence of the
academic and social stimulation otherwise afforded by those who
left.

It is undemocratic, critics avow, to "abandon" the public schools
and the children still in them. Our impression is that some such
sentiment seems to be advanced most volubly by well-to-do urbanites who
send their own children elsewhere at the first opportunity. And
protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, parents of children in
suburban public schools in effect have already "abandoned" deficient
public schools by voting with their feet—by purchasing homes in
more affluent areas where better schools are thought to flourish.

It is hardly persuasive to argue that democracy is
better served by limiting the educational choice of those most in
need of options.

Hence, it seems disingenuous for suburbanites who patronize
well-financed public schools (or who opt for private alternatives when
they can afford them) to urge that disadvantaged parents continue to
keep their children in dilapidated public schools, all in the name of
democratic egalitarianism. There is something perverse about demanding
that poor parents assume a disproportionate share of the responsibility
for safeguarding the democratic character of public schooling while the
more affluent are under no such obligation.

Still less is it persuasive to argue that democracy is better served
by limiting the educational choice of those most in need of options. As
Jonathan Rauch observes in the October 2002 Atlantic Monthly, it
is callous and wrong for affluent, predominantly white, choice critics
to continue to tell inner-city parents: "Urban schools must be fixed!
Meanwhile, we're outta here. Good luck."

In the final analysis, school choice represents a bold and
fundamental social initiative. Whether it will achieve some of the
salutary aims imagined for it by advocates or ultimately threaten the
cause of public education remains to be seen. But even as current
debate continues, in the short term it may not be productive to worry
so much about whether our public schools will lose students and dollars
to private competitors under school choice plans. In the long run, it
may be more helpful to focus attention on helping our public schools
become as common, democratic, and effective as we can make them.

Gary W. Ritter is an assistant professor in education and public
policy at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville, Ark., where
Christopher J. Lucas is a professor in educational foundations. Both
are faculty members in the university's office of research,
measurement, and evaluation.

Gary W. Ritter is an assistant professor in education and public policy
at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville, Ark., where Christopher
J. Lucas is a professor in educational foundations. Both are faculty
members in the university's office of research, measurement, and
evaluation.

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